DNS / Email record issue, please advise.

[nhouse]

Ok, I have read many posts and articles on this and other forums about the 550 relaying mail to whatever.com is not allowed issue. It seems to come and go with my server setup. My clients are a bit testy about it these days... which makes my blood pressure go up .

I want to get you good folks to relook at the following data and see if you can concur my thoughts... or suggest other options to correct the situation. I will try to be as specific as I can without making you crazy.

> I have a RH9, Plesk 7.5.3, VPS, with about 70 domains on it.
> I have my primary domain which is also signified in the Plesk server setup as the server "full host name" on one IP address. I have the rest of the domains set to share another IP address.
> The DNS template sets NS1 & NS2 for all of the domains as the same ones used by my primary domain and NS1 is used to share the domains.
> Thus, IP xx.xxx.xxx.20 is the server's and my primary domain's mail host... and IP xx.xxx.xxx.25 shows up as the shared domain's mail host. Here is what DNSReport. shows as a WARNING.

WARNING: One or more of your mailservers is claiming to be a host other than what it really is (the SMTP greeting should be a 3-digit code, followed by a space or a dash, then the host name). This probably won't cause any harm, but is a technical violation of RFC821 4.3 (and RFC2821 4.3.1). Note that the hostname given in the SMTP greeting should have an A record pointing back to the same server.

mail.shareddomain.com claims to be host primarydomain.net [but that host is at xx.xxx.xxx.20, not xx.xxx.xxx.25].

With all of that said, could this be the reason that I am getting the "550 relaying" error? Gosh, I hope all of that made sense. If this is an issue, is there a way to correct it without changing a lot of the DNS stuff?

Thanks for your time and wisdom!

 

[eWebtricity]

post the real domains so we can look at the DNS records or PM them to me and I'll look.

 

[jamesyeeoc]

Hi Nick, I have done a quick look at a couple of your hosted domains and other than not having 'abuse' or 'postmaster' accounts for the domains, I don't see anything which is 'critical'.

The warning about "Mail server host name in greeting" won't cause a 550 Relaying error, at least it never has on any domain's I deal with.

Qmail only uses the server's primary IP address for sending, so in your case, IP xx.xxx.xxx.20 is reported along with your domain's name. This is what is causing the Warning on dnsreport.com.

ERROR MESSAGE
Error 550 Relaying not allowed

RESOLUTION

This error message is coming from the mail server, not from the email client (Outlook/Outlook Express/Eudora/etc). This error means that the SMTP (outgoing) mail server did not recognize you as an authorized user and rejected your e-mail message.

Your server should already be set to require SMTP authorization, make sure all your client's users have that option enabled in their email client.

 

[nhouse]

Thanks James... I am just trying to eliminate possibilities... and for some reason, that suddenly stuck out at me to ask about. I am starting to believe that most of these errors are somehow linked to Microsoft Exchange... except sometimes my people experience the error who aren't using Exchange.

Thats what I hate... the randomness of it all

PS: today I did support with a guy where everyone in his office was NOT having the problem.. but he was IF he used his ISP's SMTP server to send through Exchange... when I changed him back to my SMTP server, it went through. Problem is, I had him to change it to his ISP (BellSouth) only a few days ago because of the 550 error. Grrrrrrrrrrrr

 

[nhouse]

eWebtricity... here are two domains to compare:

server primary : nhousemedia.net (my design)
shared domain: railway-claim-services.com (their design)

 

[jamesyeeoc]

No problem, I was just now dealing with one of my client's domains, where email from some people were being returned due to various errors, including some error messages which absolutely did not come from the Plesk/Qmail server.

This is a client where the DNS and website are hosted elsewhere, and I host the email. Turns out (after much research) that the other host allowed their domain registration to expire, and is still pending renewal/deletion (per NetworkSolutions). So the bottom line for them is that some of the time people's lookup requests give the correct IP (from DNS Cache), other times they get the IP currently assigned by NetworkSolutions (pointing to NSI's parked domain page/server). Thus causing random email delivery failures....

And this is a fairly large hosting company here in Southern California, they've spent years building up a good reputation (if nothing else).... stuff happens....

 

[nhouse]

yep... I'll say amen to that

 

[robert8450]

I hope I'm not butting in and making a stupid suggestion, but I'll post my 2 cents worth. I'm sure you're already aware of this, but here is goes...

From what I understood from your post, you have a "main website" that is the primary name server for all your customers (domain accounts) - yes? (ex, ns1.YourMainSite.com and ns2.YourMainSite.com) and all of your customers are using that, right?

Well, even though that may be the case, each of your customers (domain accounts) should be using their "own mail server" such as mail.TheirSite1.com, mail.NextCustomer2.com, Mail.NextCustomer3.com and so on and so forth.

You're not trying to use mail.YourMainSite.com as the mail server for all of your other domain accounts are you? I don't know if that would work or not, but I'm doing it the way I just explained and I don't have that problem.

Hope this helps.

-robert

 

[nhouse]

Robert... heaven's no you are not butting in. I only wish more folks on the forum had the time to comment. Just to clarify...

Yes, the main domain is replicated as the maneservers for the shared accounts in the server DNS template... and the shared accounts have their own domains listed in the mail (mx) records.

My original thought was that there may have been confusion because of the underlying IP scheme.

I appreciate your input!

 

[jamesyeeoc]

NIck -

Look at the dnsreport.com for my son's site: (I also use it as a 'live' test site on occasion)

http://www.dnsreport.com/tools/dnsreport.ch?domain=geebombom.com

As you can see, if yousetup the hosted domain with the MX record pointing to your server's primary IP (instead of the IP assigned to the domain) and a PTR record, the "Warning: Mail server host name in greeting" goes away.

mail.hosteddomain.com.	A	xx.yy.zz.20
hosteddomain.com.		MX	mail.hosteddomain.com.
xx.yy.zz.20/24		PTR	mail.hosteddomain.com.

The MX record should already be ok, I think the A and PTR are the only changes I made. And the only warning on the dnsreport that cannot go away on a Plesk server is the Serial Number. But in any case, the Hostname and Serial number warnings are no big deal and don't cause any problems anyways, but it is nice to be able to clean up the report for some clients who really insist on that stuff.

 

[nhouse]

Hey James... I appreciate the tip. After I get through this day's design work, I will give that a try. Sheesh... when you get older, it is better to focus on one thing at a time when you are under the gun. Hmmm, I wonder if that is an affliction that only affects me?

>> TheolderIgettheharderitistomultitaskitis <<

 

[jamesyeeoc]

You're not the only one afflicted...